Ancient Greek Art: The Wedding of Thetis and Peleus by Sophilos

Our second example is also a Deinos and it's known as the wedding of Thetis and Peleus by the painter known as Sopholos. Now for those of you who need a reminder, Thetis is the mother of Achilles and she famously married the mortal Peleus and at this wedding the goddess of discord Eris was not invited and as a way of getting her revenge she throws the golden apple amongst the guests and of course it's got the famous words for the fairest on and in a room full of gods and goddesses that's never a good idea and it's this that leads to Paris the Trojan prince having to choose between Athene, Hera and Aphrodite and of course he chooses Aphrodite as the fairest because she promised him Helen the most beautiful woman in the world. So this is the origins of the Trojan war and it's one of the stories in that epic cycle so that's what we're looking at on the top band there we've got one band of narrative just like we did with the Gorgon vase and then we've got two bands of what we refer to as orientalising pattern where we have floral designs such as palmettes and we have mythological and exotic animals. Now whilst we're looking at this image of the whole vase one thing that will be standing out to you is the use of colour by Sopholos there's much more variety in colour than we saw on the Gorgon's vase. So of course we've got that standard black slip but this time we've got the use of white slip as well to differentiate between males and females so we're seeing something similar there in terms of gender ideals in art as we did with our sculpture where the women tended to be sculpted in the paler marble and the men were applicable in the bronze. You'll also note that we've got the use of red slip so notably for the drapery or the cloaks of some of our individuals on the top narrative scene but also for some of our mythological creatures and animals below and looking at it in its entirety there looks like there's even more colours than just those three because Sopholos has been so skilled in the way that he painted them. Now we're going to start looking at what we can see in our narrative band at the top together but I just want to explain first of all what exactly is happening. So on that right hand side at the top with his drinking cup his cantharos in hand is Peleus and we know it's Peleus because we've got a little inscription next to each figure on this vase that tells us who they are. These are known as dipinti and he's standing in front of his house and he's welcoming his guests and something that I particularly like about this vase is that we can see just inside one of the columns to his house we've got an inscription there in Greek and this translates as Sopholos made me so sometimes our painters like to make sure we know exactly who has painted this particular scene but here it's been added in a really nice innovative little way between the door and the column. Okay so let's start thinking about who's coming to this particular wedding and I'm going to not go through absolutely everybody but point out some individuals of interest but also think about how people are arranged and how people are paired because that's the one of the most innovative aspects of this particular vase. So first up we can see Iris who is our female messenger god. We can also pick out Dionysus in that scene because he's wearing his wreath around his head his ivy wreath and he's also carrying the vine in his hand. Behind him it's just worth pointing out because look at the beautifully designed drapery Hebe and we've even got Chiron our famous centaur behind Hebe who trains our heroes but what I like mostly about this procession is that people have been put in pairings and what I mean by that is that husbands and wives are seen arriving together in chariots or in some occasions lovers. So in this first chariot that you can see in the scene we're now looking at you've got Zeus and Hera and in the second chariot we've got Poseidon and his wife Amphitrite. We've also in a third chariot if we carried on looking behind there got Ares and Aphrodite so Aphrodite has chosen to be with her boyfriend as opposed to her husband not surprisingly who's at the back and we shall have a look at Hephaestus he's kind of right at the back of the procession with a donkey poor Hephaestus. And in between these pairings in the chariots we've got groups such as the Graces, the Fates, the Muses so I really do like those particular groupings and the fact that it's married couples and lovers who are grouped together just seems really really applicable for a wedding scene. Those that haven't got a natural plus one I always quite enjoy looking at as well so we have at one point Athene and Artemis together our two virgin goddesses have decided to go as each other's plus one but my absolute favourite pairing is this one that you're looking at now Hermes and Apollo and they just look like they are having such a good time. So Hermes is controlling the chariot he's in charge there we can see him holding the reins Apollo has his lyre in his hand so these two are actually listening to music as they travel to the wedding and Apollo's mouth is slightly open so he's actually singing and I just think what a wonderful way to arrive at a wedding. And then right at the back I mentioned we would all feel very sorry for Hephaestus so he's our final person right there at the end with a donkey. Right the reference to the donkey well in mythology he was famously taken back up to Mount Olympus by Dionysus travelling on a donkey so it does link to that particular piece of mythology but sadly Hephaestus can quite often be grouped together with subhuman creatures in art to reference the way the Greeks saw him as a bit of an outsider god sadly due to his disability so he might be very quick-witted and clever for example in the Odyssey you know when he catches Ares and Aphrodite in bed but kind of physically is seen as inferior to some of the other gods for example Ares. Finally one other thing that I just wanted to point out about this particular narrative or even the style of the piece is the way in which the anatomy again is shown in this archaic period we've again got the long fingers and the long toes and actually you can see them also on Hebe and Dionysus and on Peleus so very typical to have those elongated digits in the archaic period it's also very typical to have our figures in side profile but with the eye looking out at the viewer so it's a kind of a frontal eye and this is something that was influenced by of course the Egyptians in their paintings and you'll notice as well that there's not much of an emphasis on trying to to paint the anatomical form or the body most of our figures just give the impression of a body beneath that drapery.